Time Is Critical In Lafayette Suit

January 18, 1995|by GAY ELWELL, The Morning Call

Stripped of the speculation that its theft was a motive for murder and divorced from Saturday matinee whispers of a mummy's curse, the case of Lafayette College v. Robert G. Gennett seems simple, even anticlimactic.

The essential question now to be answered by Northampton County Judge F.P. Kimberly McFadden, who heard less than two hours of testimony yesterday, is: Did the college take prompt-enough legal action against Gennett when it learned that it was missing an ancient Egyptian artifact and he was responsible for its theft?

McFadden will base her ruling on yesterday's testimony from four library staffers, as well as other documents, including earlier depositions in the case. One of those depositions is from Gennett, who has admitted stealing the 3,600-year-old carnelian- and glass-studded silver and gold breastplate while he was an assistant librarian in the college's Skillman Library in the late 1970s.

Gennett, fired in 1983 for stealing money from copy machines in the library, says Lafayette waited too long to file its 1991 suit and claims the institution was aware as early as 1987 that the pectoral had been taken from its collection. Generally, lawsuits must be brought within two years of the occurrence or discovery.

The college, which acquired the breastplate and other pharaonic artifacts in 1873 from the widow of the civil engineer who brought them back from Egypt, says any supposed "curse" on the items is the creation of a wire service reporter trying to spice up a story.

The college also says it didn't know the amulet was its rightful property until 1990, because Gennett, who was in charge of the library's special collections, deliberately eradicated records of its existence.

The amulet, in the form of a vulture and cobra, is now owned by Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, which acquired the piece in 1981 for $165,000. That transaction took place after the artifact failed to meet its minimum price at a 1980 New York auction, where it had been consigned by a Bucks County antiques dealer representing Gennett.

The dealer was once a defendant to the suit, but the college dropped its claims against the man, who said Gennett told him the pectoral was his personal property.

The college also settled its suit against the MFA in 1992, giving the museum clear title for an undisclosed sum of money and a three-week display of the piece at

the college.

Gennett, tall and gaunt, with a gray beard and thinning gray hair, attended yesterday's nonjury trial. Although he occasionally conferred with his attorney, James McNamara, he offered no direct testimony and, with chin dropped to his chest, seldom met anyone's eye.

His background reportedly led to his firing by a New Jersey law library, and he is currently making deliveries for a Bucks County food company.

When the theft first came to light, speculation arose that it might have been a factor in the 1984 murder of another Lafayette College library staffer, cataloger Alice Hall, in her Palmer Township home. While her name, and that of her lover and boss, former librarian Clyde Haselden, was mentioned in testimony yesterday, her still-unsolved murder was not.

Dungan, a cataloging librarian, said it was possible that the pectoral was never included in the library's catalog, as was the case with "a fair amount of things."

Cieslicki, hired as head librarian in 1980, said she never saw or knew of the pectoral until the late 1980s, when Shaw brought to her attention a letter from a Metropolitan Museum researcher that mentioned the pectoral in context with a papyrus in the college's collection. She then brought the matter to the attention of the college provost and instructed Shaw to investigate.

Okaya said that although the 1987 letter mentioned the pectoral, she was researching the papyrus and believed the Metropolitan expert had mentioned the breastplate simply to place the papyrus in a historical context. She told college attorney Daniel Cohen it was not until 1989 that it became apparent that the pectoral was the college's, and not until Shaw became aware in 1990 that Gennett had had access to the collection that all the pieces came together.